Revenue Caps Pondered Some More

The Texas Task Force on Appraisal Reform has now decided to take a look at lowering revenue caps to control how much money local government entities can collect without voter approval.

While we already have such a system in reality (it’s called the effective tax rate and the provisions that trigger an election if the entity goes a certain percentage above that) that’s evidently not good enough for the tax phobic Republicans dominating the commission.
Of course, the commission casts the debate by saying it will give voters more say in their local governments.

In reality, however, it will give the anti-tax crowd another excuse to hamstring local governments so that they are unable to provide necessary services to their citizens.

The revenue cap is a bad idea, plain and simple.

The other issue, of course, is that local governments don’t necessarily want the Texas Legislature any deeper in their business than they already are.

Given that each of the state’s thousands of cities and 254 counties have such different needs, setting a revenue cap that applies to all counties or to all cities could be a dangerous task.

Given the lobbying power of the Texas Association of Counties and the Texas Municipal League, however, you can bet that the Lege will have a major fight on its hands over this issue.

Further, this could be one of those issues where the Republican leadership finds itself on a different side of the issue than many of its rank and file members.

I don’t believe there is strong support in the Lege for revenue caps, especially not among moderate Republicans and Lege members who are former school board and city council members. They know the trials and tribulations the local governments face and that the local governments don’t like it when the Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, hands down dictates that virtually change the way they do business.

It’ll be a fight for sure, and one to watch at that.

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